“Zara—”
But I disconnected and slipped off the earpiece, shoved it in my pocket with my gloves, and stalked forward, unzipping my coat as I went, fingers coiling around the butt of one of the Desert Eagles I carried. I really wanted to shoot something and if I didn’t think it would alert everyone to my presence, I’d fire a few rounds into the broadside of the barn across the road just to get some aggression out. There’s a reason the layman didn’t go with .50 AE rounds—that shit had a recoil only select humans and vampires could handle. And squeezing the trigger on a gun like that felt fucking great.
Hopefully I’d get to soon.
I ghosted across the gravel, up to the truck, and glanced in the driver’s side. No sign of him.
The farmhouse was two stories and perched on a slight incline, something out of a zombie film with peeling paint on the siding and a porch that slouched in the center. Low lights burned yellow in a handful of windows but I saw no sign of movement from a distance.
Because he might already be dead.
I kept the handgun out and ready as I walked up the lawn, but if it looked bad, I’d trade it for the shotgun and really make a motherfucking entrance.
A shadow flickered across the ground.
I froze, glanced up, raised the gun. Studied the windows—saw it again. Someone walked past the upstairs window, near the front of the house, cutting over the light glowing in the room. I tucked the gun back and crept forward, toward the covered porch. It was a ten foot jump to the porch roof I cleared easily, my boots clicking down and old shingles shifting dryly. This half roof ran near the second floor windows and I stepped cautiously forward, hand out and dragging over the siding. Paint flecked off under my fingertips, white drifting in the darkness.
The low murmur of arguing met my ears, muffled by the windows—all were closed, sealed shut, and even with my hearing, I couldn’t pick out the actual words.
Arguing. So he wasn’t dead. Yet.
A warm, damp wind kicked up and threw my hair back. I crouched low and crab-walked across the creaky roof thing that cut along the side of the house in more of a lip than anything. My balance was pretty good but I grabbed the nearest window frame to hold me steady anyway.
Floors creaked inside, old hardwood barking with every heavy step someone took. I reached the window with the occupied room at last, peering around the corner.
Nope. Not fucking dead.
Nate paced, throwing his hands, pointing at the room’s other occupant—Mish stood to the side, arms crossed under her breasts, saying nothing. It was the front bedroom of the old place; the window before me was thick with dust and grime around the edges, and beyond sat an old oak bed with a patterned quilt, shelves with books and knickknacks, full length mirror and wardrobe in the corner. Wallpaper was a peeling old floral design. The house looked lived in, but I couldn’t imagine Mish ever taking up in such a residence.
No sign of a kid. Big fucking surprise.
Nate ceased his stomping and turned back to her, thrusting his finger at her again, shouting some accusation I couldn’t make out—and, come to think of it, it was pretty goddamn odd I couldn’t hear given that they were ten feet away, even with the window between us.
Mishka stalked forward, lips moving, voice low enough that I didn’t catch even a murmur from her. The layers in her hair were combed straight and slightly tousled, moving over her bare shoulders and arms; she wore a simple dark tank and another peasant skirt. Some things never changed, mainly that Mish dressed like a hippy. Her fingers folded over his arm as she reached him.
He didn’t push her away. Just shook his head, shutting his eyes to whatever she said to him.
A buzzing started in my head, in my ears, sound seeping away as I stared. Like I wasn’t in my head, wasn’t in the scene, wasn’t feeling the wind or hearing the crickets below or smelling the heady mix of summer air. I was numb, heart beating up near my ears, drowning out everything else. The buzzing was like hornets rattling around in my skull, like a dream I couldn’t wake from.
I could just watch.
Her lips were still moving and the tears streaking down her cheeks shone, hands moved up his arms to his shoulders, heels lifted to put her on her toes. Then she leaned up and kissed him.
And he let her.
He didn’t hold her, not at first—didn’t kiss her back, not at first—but her fingers came up to cup his jaw and his mouth moved against hers. Then open mouths, swapping spit.
He kissed her.
He kissed her.
Their lips separated, foreheads coming together, and his hands rested on her shoulders at last.
That touch—like a lover’s. Tender. Familiar. Thumb grazing over her shoulder gently. She subtly reacted, body leaning into him. My vision narrowed on her hands drifting down, over his abdomen, toward the top button of his jeans.
There was no danger to him I’d been missing. No epic smackdown. No justified cutting off her head and sticking it on a pike. They were just standing around, having a lover’s quarrel. About to get naked.
I stepped off the roof, landed in the dirt, and walked back for my bike.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Don’t Take It Out on the Delivery Boy
I pulled into the driveway at Nic and Peri’s just as an old Honda Civic pulled up and a young guy climbed out carrying a large insulated red case. He wore a hat, pizza logo on the front.
Oh good. I was hungry.
He glanced at me once as I killed the engine. My hair was in disarray, helmet gone—I thought it must’ve slipped off the seat when I went back but I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember much, moving in a daze, brain shut off because the moment any thoughts crept up, it seemed a very good idea to push them back again. My hands were shaking and the buzzing started in my head again and I might snap.
I crossed the lawn while the pizza guy stepped up to Nic’s house and rang the doorbell. He glanced over his shoulder again, eyes widening as I grabbed him.
The pizza box thumped on the ground, something wet shifting within. The boy let out a squeak as my fangs bared; in my peripheral vision, I caught front door open, figures coming to get their food, but then I couldn’t see them past my victim as I sank my teeth into his throat and drank. I pulled at the blood, jerking it out fast and hard, taking enough to fill myself with a nice warm glow.
Then I let him go and he stumbled back, nearly tripping on the pizza, stomping over Nic’s garden of begonias and polished rocks. I shouldered my way through the doorway, feet scraping on the welcoming mat, past those staring at me from the living room, and then right, down the hall, into the bedroom. Not bothering with the lights, I slammed the door and flopped backward on the bed, still in all my gear with the shotgun biting into my back and handguns awkward under my arms.
I couldn’t get it out of my head.
And I tried. Oh, I tried. My skull was buzzing again and I understood the feeling now—remembered the feeling. It was that point beyond rage. The scary numbness, detachedness. I could do some very, very bad things while detached. Anger is good and clean, passionate. But that little step forward past rage and the brain shuts off, the body moves on autopilot, and you ride a high because the moment you slip just slightly, you’re gonna fall and land fucking hard.
I knew this because I felt it once. I understood my husband had tried to have me killed, killing our baby in the process, and I knew he’d remarried and I’d already killed their two kids. That’s why I was going into our former home, why I killed everyone inside, and why I couldn’t entirely let myself acknowledge finding the other woman in our bed because if I thought too long on it, I wouldn’t recover.
I loved him. I. Loved. Him. I didn’t love people. I didn’t know how to love people—that part of me died with Ana, the human I used to be. He made me vulnerable, tore down everything I had in place and looked right in me, made me feel like maybe there was more in me, more I was capable of.
And now he was shacked up with another woman. Hi
s lying cunt of a wife. Who tried to kill him.
Instead of me. Yeah, okay, I actually did kill him, but I was trying to save him. Keep him safe. I had good intentions. I didn’t pick him out of a crowd because of his power and money, seduce him, marry him, and then hire someone to kill him to unlock my demonic power.
And for a moment I had a horrible girly, human, sad little voice that piped up and questioned what was wrong with me, then, if she was the preferable choice.
For a moment, I felt like Ana.
I didn’t know why Pavel had wanted to kill me, kill our baby. I never found out, not even when I burst into his room and he spent his last moments begging for his new wife’s life. I didn’t know what was wrong with me then, what was so horrible about me—about Ana—that he couldn’t love me, that he had to replace me. Maybe there was something about me, something just ingrained in me, that made people incapable of loving me.
I told you I’m not worth it.
I blinked and shoved everything back again, staring instead up at the total blackness of the room. Fuck this shit. I wasn’t Ana anymore. I was awesome. I would not be done in by a stupid man and a fucking mortal and their apparently-epic we-got-married-after-only-knowing-each-other-like-a-month love. Nope, I’d order them a fucking fruit basket in the morning. With poisoned fucking apples. And fucking razorblades in the bananas.
A faint thread of light leaked from the living room, down the narrow hall, under the door, and soon a few shapes took form in the room, but I closed my eyes and it was total blessed blackness again.
Steps in the hall and I recognized them. Soft knock on the door and then Nicolette eased it open. “Zar?”
Don’t ask. Just do NOT fucking ask.
“I just had to give the pizza boy five hundred dollars cash to ensure he didn’t phone the police. And a Band-Aid. What’s going on?”
I squeezed my shut eyes tighter. The farmhouse. The bedroom. The bed. Were they already on it? How fast did he drop his fucking pants for her? Did they stand there awhile just crying and holding each other like the fact that she was now thirty years old somehow excused the shit she did when she was twenty-four? Excused her breaking him? She wasn’t there—I was. She didn’t see him learn all the new things about her—her heritage, her lies, her schemes. I did. I watched. I watched a man who had been damaged badly as a child think he’d finally found someone who gave a shit only to realize she’d been playing him.
Oh god. I was tipping back, over that line, the slick coat of numbness on my skin dissipating, bleeding away as rage boiled.
“Is he—”
“Nic,” I pronounced carefully, my eyes squeezed shut still, “you need to leave the room. I am not safe to be around at the moment.”
To her credit she did, stepping back and closing the door. That’s why she was my best friend—she knew.
She knew who I was. What I was. Glimpsed what I was capable of and gave me respectful distance. Didn’t give me a reason to do more than idly threaten to throw her out a window now and again.
He should’ve known too.
****
Eventually I stripped my gear off, left it sitting on the bed, and collected all the knives I had stored here along with a whetstone, then padded into the living room. I had no idea what time it was. Ryann and Ellie were on one side of the couch, him sitting awake and her lying with her head on his knee and dozing. His fingers lazily dragged through her hair and for a moment I wanted to hack the pair of them to pieces. But I might need them, so I didn’t.
I perched at the other end of the sofa, set the knives on the cushion beside me to deter anyone from coming near, plucked the first double-sided dagger up, and started sharpening. “Anything new on the apocalypse front?”
They were all staring. I thought of dramatically throwing the knife across the room and embedding it in the monitor of Nic’s computer, followed by shouting to get back to work, but decided against it. I kept my focus on the knife instead.
“Abel’s still going through the private archives at St. Michael’s,” Nic said at last, her chair squeaking as she fidgeted.
“Does Peter know anything?”
“No, he’s not up to date on prophecies. Says the first task would be finding where it came from—there are many obscure prophets. If it’s something followed by the Veil, original documents would be locked up.”
“Any other calls?” I had to ask because I’m an idiot.
Nic paused. Like she knew. “No.”
Of course. Not even a, Hey Zara, she didn’t try to kill me after all. Not even a lie about where he was or when he’d be back. Maybe she’d already thrown him in that pit of stakes.
I glanced up at Peri, who sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, staring at me like everyone else was. “Do you have any explosives?”
She didn’t even blink. “A few. Nothing heavy duty but I found a supplier who has home-brewed C-4—”
“Um, hello?” Nic called, gaze darting between us. “Apocalypse now-ish. Not a good time to break out bombs.”
Might be the perfect time but I held my tongue, focusing instead on the knife again. “What time is it?”
“Eleven,” Nic said. “In the morning.”
Jesus. When I’d zoned out in the bedroom I’d really zoned out. Quite a few hours to go before dark. I could probably sharpen a lot of knives by then.
Nic’s phone rattled on the desk behind her and my heart stuttered while she picked it up. “Abel.”
Shit. Well, it wasn’t irrational of me—he stole my phone, which had Nic’s number programmed in. He could reach me if he wanted to. He could have come back here. To me. To at least say to my fucking face why he was being a douchebag asshole.
Nic frowned, brows pulling down over tired eyes. She hadn’t slept much lately, by the looks of it. Or changed out of the yoga pants and tee she’d been wearing yesterday. “No, that’s still good. Let me know what you find.” She hung up and looked straight at me—guess I was still supposed to be the bossy one.
Mostly I wanted to tell everyone to go home and then talk to Peri some more about explosives. “What’s he know?”
“In the locked up archives—supposedly old bibles and religious texts—he found books. Accounting books, going back a century.”
“I’m sorry, but what the fuck does this have to do with the Hell Bitches rising and jaws and hell and all that shit?”
She flinched, hurt crossing her pretty, naive face, and if I wasn’t operating on pure rage, I might’ve felt bad. Or I might not’ve. I wasn’t in the headspace to gauge my regular empathy levels.
“Okay. Meeting break.” Peri rose and took Nic by the arm, tapped Ellie’s shoulder and he roused Ryann. They all trudged away and I picked up another knife before I sharpened the other down to nothing.
A minute later Peri stepped back in my peripheral vision, dropping to sit on the coffee table in front of me. She hunched over, legs splayed a little like guys do to give their balls some room, elbows on her knees. Her head was about a foot away from mine and I could probably stab her in the throat before she knew what hit her.
“Is this the part where I am told to apologize to Nic?” Up and down with the whetstone, even strokes until the edge of the blade was fine and deadly. “I probably will anyway, later. When I have a conscience again.”
“Was there a kid?”
“Nope.”
“Was he dead?”
My lips twisted and I stared at the tip of the blade I was working into a fine point, Peri’s face beyond a blur. “Nope.”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want to tear her arms off and beat her with them but the last time I did that I wasn’t dealing with a witch, so I might have to kill her fast.”
“Still want explosives or you prefer up close and personal?”
At last I set down the knife and sharpener, angled my feet flat on the floor, and leaned forward as well. “Any particular reason you’re being helpful?”
Peri’s gaze
darted to the side, staring at the covered windows. I wondered, briefly, if she ever grew tired of the false lighting, but Nic had me under the impression her life with her merc organization was primarily underground, so she was used to it. “You helped me. Took me back after I betrayed you and N—”
“I don’t want to hear his name right now.”
She tipped her head in a tight nod. “I get it. You also saved my life, right when I figured out I wanted it saved. And killing this bitch might save the world. Plus...” Her gaze returned to mine and she cocked a brow. “It might be fun. So. Explosives?”
I thought on it. “Up close and personal. Of course, I can only travel at night, so they’ll be on guard then. And one of them can stop time. Maybe blowing the fuck out of things would be best.”
Peri steepled her forefingers together and tapped her chin with them. “You need the element of surprise and guns blazing. Take out one immediately or separate them.”
As long as we were talking about killing people—and not one another—Peri and I got along quite well. “Pretty much.”
“Okay...” She dropped her hands and leaned closer still, voice pitching low so I had to strain to hear her and I was half a foot away with super sensitive hearing. “Remember the computer I stole from Bravo Division, that Nic pieced together with files on me?”
I nodded. I didn’t remember but that was faster than explaining I tended to forget things not directly about me.
“They had all these science-y papers about me. What they thought I could do—I have something I can try, to help you out. Demon magic. I was learning for Nic.”
Oh god I hoped it wasn’t a sex thing. “What the fuck do you mean demon magic?”
I must’ve been too loud—she rolled her eyes and gestured for me to keep my voice down. “Your sunlight allergy,” she breathed in my ear, “comes from the demon. A demon from my dimension where I have dominion. Allergies are a reaction to something the demon can’t tolerate—so you basically need an antihistamine.”
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